Knowledge: Touchable Earth provides students and teachers a platform to watch vignettes of children around the world. The videos give students a sneak peek into how children around the world live their everyday life. The videos touch upon family life, school, play, cultural information, friends and facts. Under each country you can view videos on the countries geographic location, their capital, their flag, and their national anthem. This is not an interactive app in which kids can demonstrate their work, but rather a resource for students and teachers to use as a presentation of information coming straight from other young students around the world.
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| Student or teachers can click on the country and watch a number of vignettes of students around the world. |
Application: Currently in our classroom we teach an around the world curriculum. Students have passports and as we "fly" to each country we learn a variety of facts about each country, complete art projects that relate to the country and show them where the country is located on a map. Last year when we were learning about Chinese New Year, we showed them a video of two children in China showing and explaining how they celebrate the holiday in their country. Our students really responded to watching the video and often referred back to the gained knowledge throughout the unit and at home. One child went home and told their mother that they needed to clean their room for Chinese New Year because it was good luck. Touchable Earth would be a great resource to use throughout this curriculum to actually show videos of children from other countries and how they live. Young children would not be able to navigate this website independently but it is a great resource for teachers to expose children to people from other counties with different cultures.
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| Writing Chinese Characters |
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| African Sand Art |
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Pilot Jillian flying to the next country, showing our passport on the way through!
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Reflection: I'm looking forward to integrating these vignettes into my classroom during our around the world curriculum. I do have some concerns about this app and its use in the classroom. The website discusses how there is a downloadable app for students to navigate on their own. I was unable to find a downloadable application for student use. It seems as though most of the needed information is on the website but not user friendly for young students. There is also a very limited amount of countries to choose from. This website could be used by older students, and used as a resource for teachers with younger students. It is important for students to not only hear about other places and people to see it and experience as well. This allows students to begin exposure to to other cultures and being their path to becoming a global citizen.
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